The Higher Education Support Program (HESP) promotes the advancement of higher education within the humanities and social sciences, throughout the region of post-communist countries of Central and Eastern Europe, the former Soviet Union and Mongolia.
The Regional Seminar for Excellence in Teaching is the successor to the HESP Summer Schools Program, which builds on its experience and furthers its effects to promote and nurture university-level teaching excellence in the social sciences and humanities in the region. To achieve this long-term effect, HESP has adopted essential shifts in the program strategy:
- from improvements in the existing curricula by modeling after outside expertise to establishing the tradition of collaborative critical rethinking of scholarship and the state of the art in discipline;
- from innovating in the techniques of classroom teaching to deeper understanding of teaching and learning process and linking teaching with scholarly activity;
- from a practice of simple transfer of teaching content and tools to emphasizing continuous development and self-renewal of the select, most committed individuals and empowering them to become catalysts of the process of critical inquiry into the scholarship and academic curricula in their home institutional environment.
FORMAT
HESP invites proposals of multi-year projects from academic institutions, associations or individuals with demonstrated potential for and commitment to promoting teaching excellence and lending on-going support to individual faculty and departments in the region.
The projects considered for funding will target the young faculty currently teaching in the social sciences and humanities in the institutions of higher education in Central, Eastern, South Eastern Europe, the Newly Independent States of the former Soviet Union and Mongolia (the target region). Such projects will form and work with groups of 25-30 recurrent participants and international teams of resource faculty and use coherent sequential multi-year programs, whose content, focus and methodology is continuously and cooperatively reconsidered throughout the term of the project. The participation of young university faculty from outside the region (especially from the West) is encouraged, where feasible and necessary, provided the organizers secure funding sources other than HESP grant to cover the costs of such participants. The projects will commence in the summer of 2003 or during the 2003-04 academic year and extend to up to three consecutive years.
The program of HESP Regional Seminar evolves around intensive summer sessions (2-4 weeks in length, hosted in the region), and inter-session activities, which engage the participants and resource persons in collaboration on the following levels:
- exploration of the state of the art in the discipline, association with and discussion of contemporary trends in scholarship and teaching,
- collaborative advancement of learning in the discipline within the international context,
- engaging the students of the program participants in the similar learning and development processes by stimulating critical inquiry and intellectual search, and, through this, inducing their future continuous self-renewal.
The extent of concern of the projects with these levels should reflect the state of development of the discipline in the targeted (sub-)region and the entry level of the participating young faculty.
HESP provides funding commensurate with the geography of the projects and nature and length of activities. HESP encourages project organizers to solicit cost sharing contributions from other donors.
APPLICATION PROCESS
Proposals of multi-year projects that respond to the goals and priorities of the HESP Regional Seminar for Excellence in Teaching, for which funding is sought starting not earlier than June 1, 2003, must be submitted in English, electronically, by fax or mail to HESP at the address below to be received by February 25, 2003. HESP will review the proposals and will invite selected applicants to submit a detailed plan of activities and budget proposals for the first year of the project. As a rule, HESP will commit to multi-year projects but will provide funding on an annual basis, all grants subject to on-going progress review. Final decisions will be made by the Higher Education Sub-board on the recommendations of the HESP Regional Seminar Advisory Committee. Selected applicants will be notified in late March 2003.
The detailed Guide for Applicants will be available from the HESP office and through home page www.osi.hu/hesp.
Contact Information
HESP Regional Seminar for Excellence in Teaching
Open Society Institute
Oktober 6. u. 12., Budapest 1051, Hungary
Tel: (36-1) 235-6152, Fax: (36-1) 411-4401
Oleksandr Shtokvych, Program Manager
E-mail: oshtokvych@osi.hu
Marianna Jo, Program Coordinator
E-mail: mjo@osi.hu
